The Monster Key

My wife was a reading teacher in a middle school, and she wanted to introduce different stations in her room. The kids could go from station to station doing different things at each one. She needed something for the listening station. So she asked me to write something and record myself reading it.

I had an idea for a story that had been in my brain since I was a kid. I don't remember the cartoon but there was a boy laying asleep on a bed. The dad was in the other room when he heard his son screaming. The dad knocked the door open and saw his son being pulled under the bed by a tentacle. The boy disappeared and the dad ran over grabbed the bed flipped it over and in the floor was a red portal leading to another world. Without hesitation the dad jumped in after his son. The portal closed without a trace. (I wish I knew what show that was. If you know please let me know.)

So I wrote the first two chapters of The Monster Key and recorded myself reading it. After my wife let the students hear and read it, two of the students asked to go to the library.
They came back and said "The library doesn't have that book! It isn't checked out, they just don't have it!"
She told them that I hadn't finished it yet.

I asked those two boys for ideas and I gave them the chapters to read as I finished them. I even dedicated the book to them.